Guide

You can claim Gift Aid and GASDS without rebuilding the year in a spreadsheet.

This note is for UK church treasurers who spend claim season reconstructing who declared, which gifts are eligible, and which cash collections might count under GASDS. ChurchPay holds those records as gifts come in, then exports an HMRC-ready pack. You still file the claim with HMRC. ChurchPay does not submit it to Charities Online.

Claim season is when the spreadsheet usually fails

Most church Gift Aid trouble is not the 25p arithmetic. It is the week you try to reconstruct who gave, whether they had a live declaration, which fund the gift was for, and which cash collection might count as a small donation. The spreadsheet was a memory aid for a year of Sundays. By March it is a second job.

If those facts live in the giving flow and the service close, you are not building a year-end workbook from bank lines and paper slips. You are exporting what the year already recorded.

Gift Aid: attach the declaration to the gift

HMRC needs a valid declaration from a UK taxpayer and a record of the donation. ChurchPay asks for that declaration on-screen when the gift is made — online, at the kiosk, or from a QR code — and keeps a copy of the wording the donor agreed to. Paper declarations can still be scanned onto the person.

Once a declaration is on file, later eligible gifts can use it. ChurchPay will not put the same gift into two claim batches.

GASDS: evidence belongs on the service

The Gift Aid Small Donations Scheme is for small cash gifts where you do not have a donor name. It is a separate scheme, with its own annual cap and conditions. Official limits live on GOV.UK, not in a product brochure.

When a ChurchPay service is closed, anonymous cash can be recorded against that service. That is the evidence trail: this Sunday, this collection, this amount. Whether a particular collection is eligible is still an HMRC question for your church, not a number we invent.

Export the pack. Then file the claim.

ChurchPay produces a claim pack: a ChR1-shaped CSV, new declaration evidence, and a manifest. When a closed service has anonymous cash, a GASDS summary can sit in the same ZIP. You download it. You (or your adviser) still submit the claim through HMRC's process.

ChurchPay does not log into Charities Online or HMRC Online Services for you. If you need one-click government submission, say so in the demo — that is a real difference versus some other UK church products. The companion note on church-pay.com walks the morning you actually file: prepare the claim pack before Charities Online.

Official scheme pages: Claim Gift Aid and GASDS on GOV.UK. Also see ChurchPay Gift Aid software, preparing the claim pack before Charities Online, and online giving.

Bring last year's claim questions to a demo.

We will walk a claim pack and a closed service. No invented reclaim totals. ChurchPay exports the pack; you still file it.

Book a demo Gift Aid product page